The Last Girl
by lorien829
Summary: He has kept his promise to her. He has thought of her every day, every waking moment, seeing her in the hollow, sad eyes of the Charmings, hearing her in the silence of the vast marble corridors of the castle, tasting the memory of her lips on his. Picks up after 3 x 11, but before "One Year Later". Mild spoilers for upcoming episodes.


**The Last Girl**

_**All that I keep thinking throughout this whole flight**_

_** Is it could take my whole damn life to make this right.**_

_** -**_**Snow Patrol, **_**Make This Go On Forever**_

The city is enormous. Buildings clumped together and surrounded by water, giving off the general impression of a giant anthill made of metal and glass. He has been here before, even docked here before, _been searching for someone_ before… and yet, the task did not seem so insurmountable and all but impossible then.

He does not ask himself what the difference is. _She _is the difference.

He forces himself to keep his mind on his tasks; it is both necessary and unnecessary. Steering a ship is something he has been doing for over three hundred years… and yet, the _Jolly_ has never shuddered and moaned as she is doing now. She is limping, struggling, mortally wounded. He knows without looking that somewhere her integrity has been compromised. Even so, he knows where he needs to go, remembers the isolated berth at the abandoned wharf that he had used the last time he was here. He has always had a sailor's eye, an uncanny ability to remember landmarks and star positions and harbor depths, no matter how long it had been since he had last seen them.

There are many boats out. It is a beautiful, mild day, the water like the surface of a pond, and he passes Harbor Patrol, tourist ferries, fishing boats headed out, and a small yacht or two. He feels the _Jolly _slowing, knows she is taking on water, shredded sails flapping listlessly in the tiny furl of breeze. The cutters move by without slowing; the nobility sunning on the rich wooden decks of their pleasure boats do not even look his way.

The Queen's spell holds. He is grateful. Their passage was so violent that he half-expected the very threads of enchantment that bound them into one unwieldy package to unravel.

His eyes trip over the diagram he'd crudely etched into the railing lifetimes ago. _Port…starboard…_ There is a queer pang in his chest, as he adjusts their heading ever so slightly, his hook sliding along the wheel to catch and turn one of the spokes. He has been trying to tell himself for the last couple of hours that he should stop saying "they" and "their" as if he is in company. He is alone on the _Jolly_, alone on this mad quest. As much as he loves his ship, as much as she has long felt like an extension of himself, she is not real, and he is alone.

Aside from brief respites, he is always alone. And _before_… he would have told anyone, with all the nonchalant bravado he could muster, that he found his own companionship far preferable to any other.

_She_ would have been able to tell that he was lying, _had_ always been able to tell when he was lying, ever since he first surfaced from the pile of corpses and saw her… and claimed to be a blacksmith. She'd been a fool, he'd thought derisively, disclosing her secret ability so early in their acquaintance. He'd been able to dodge it, to carefully word things so that his plaintive question at the top of the beanstalk had been true. _Have I told you a lie?_ She'd known it too – he saw it plainly in her guilt-ridden glance, the rigid lines of her spine and shoulders as she strode quickly away from him, hunching against his shout of betrayal. _Swan!_

He'd been oh-so-careful after that, keeping to the letter of the truth, if not the spirit of it. He was a villain, he remembers thinking. And she was the child of heroes, the child of True Love. There would be no chance for them, no need for him to protect her, defend her, present her with a better side of himself. But somehow, she'd ensnared him anyway, bewitched him so inexplicably and so well that he found he was not surprised in the least that she had an awakening gift for magic. And in Neverland, he'd not lied to her at all, put away deceit and trickery, offering her the only thing of value he had – his service, his aid, the last vestiges of his honor – and realized that somehow he'd become _driven_ to act in her best interests – hers and those of her son's.

_It had been working_. She had been falling too, as thoroughly as he had. He could read it in those open-book eyes, could sense the crumbling of her walls, built high and intimidating over years of isolation. He had been content to let her choose him, to _win her heart_… to bide his time. His lone hand steals involuntarily up to his chest to stave off the pain of the irony. He is more than three hundred years old. Time was something he had long since disregarded, given no attention to after Liam, after Milah, something he had always had in abundance. But then, the pirate who lived an age for revenge, yet set aside that vengeance, who had forsworn love, only to fall again, fast, hard, eternally, who had _all the time in the world… _ran out of time.

_They _had run out of time.

He feels the _Jolly_ shift unevenly beneath his feet. She is listing. The weight of water in the holds, the erratic movement of the liquid is unbalancing her. He is nearly there, nearly there…

… and then the truly difficult part of his journey will begin. He finds that somewhat hard to fathom, given how he feels that he has aged years in mere days, and a century in the past year. _One year_. _Three hundred and eighty-five days._

_There's not a day that will go by that I won't think of you._

_Good_.

He has kept his promise to her. He has thought of her every day, every waking moment, seeing her in the hollow, sad eyes of the Charmings, hearing her in the silence of the vast marble corridors of the castle, tasting the memory of her lips on his – their first kiss, the first time in ages that he felt connected to anything, surely cannot be their last – feeling the twin bolts of hope and despair that shot through him at her simple reply: _Good_.

For why would it be good for him to think of her, for him to fail utterly to forget her, unless she harbors the same feeling that he does coupled with the hope that this is _not_ forever.

The _Jolly's _planking protests, long, low ominous creaks. He pretends that he does not hear the gurgle of water within her boards. The splintered mast that has barely survived their trip from the Enchanted Forest is no longer pointing vertically. The dock awaits them; even if she sank now, he could surely swim the short distance remaining, though he looks askance at the oily water.

* * *

_They have not been in the realm for even a half-hour, before Hook is taking commanding strides through the cavernous great hall, paying no attention to the dead leaves and fragments of creeper that waft in his wake. Belle and Baelfire have moved quickly, throwing aside heavy, dusty tapestries, opening windows, but it still smells musty and forlorn, forgotten._

"_When?" he demands of Charming, as though the remainder of the question should be self-evident. The Prince opens his mouth, but Hook does not afford him the opportunity to speak. "When are we going back to get them?" He barely registers Snow White's choked sob from where she stands behind her husband._

"_Was there something back there at the town line that you didn't understand, pirate?" The Queen still holds herself like one, though her voice is not as snide as it normally is; unshed tears over her son clog her throat. "The beans are destroyed; Jefferson's hat is gone; Rumplestiltskin and Pan are dead. There is no magic in Storybrooke. There is no way back. And even if there were… she doesn't remember you."_

_A two-edged knife of futile rage and desolation shivers through him._

"_There has got to be a way." _This cannot be the end_, part of him insists. And it's like watching Milah crumple onto the deck of his ship; it's like watching the pool of blood spread beneath his mangled arm; it's like watching Baelfire's eyes harden into chips of stone above his mother's sketch; it's like feeling metal close around his wrist, as he is abandoned at the top of a beanstalk. It's like all of these and none of these, and yet infinitely worse than these._

_His angry blue eyes meet those of the Queen. For the briefest glimmer of an instant, he thinks that she does understand what he is going through, what this is doing to him. But then her jaw clenches and her eyes cool. Her voice is flat and final._

"_There is no way."_

_He goes through motions. The kingdom has been overrun with unsavory types in places, left completely desolate and lifeless in others. There is much to do, and he becomes Charming's right-hand man (there is a joke in there somewhere, he is sure), overseeing the dredging of the harbor, the repair of the docks and piers, left unmaintained for over twenty-eight years, the clearing of the overgrown farmland. There are cottage roofs in need of new thatching, crumbled chimneys in need of remortared stone. There are ogres to drive back, wolves to guard against. He is handy with a sword, and thinks quickly in a fight. There are those who do not welcome back the Prince and the Princess, much less in the company of the Evil Queen who caused it all in the first place. Things do not exactly settle into routine peacefully and painlessly._

_He is glad. If he can be busy: if there are tasks to perform, if there are men to command, he can distract himself. He tells himself that helping her parents is like helping her; he tells himself that she would be proud of him, of who he'd become. Just a handful of months ago, he would have laughed at the poor sod who lived for the approval of someone who no longer knew he existed – indeed, had _never_ known he existed… but she _had _entered his life, and changed everything. He knows that he can never go back to who he had been, not even when the _Jolly Roger_ comes sailing serenely into port, from God-knows-where, under her own power without a soul aboard._

_It is almost like the arrival of the _Jolly_ is some kind of sign, a portent from a benevolent fortuneteller. _You're going to need me_, the pristine deck, the billowing sails, his untouched cabin all seem to say. And yet, even the _Jolly_ is different; for now, _her _presence is imprinted there also: on the deck, at the wheel, in his quarters… He loves his ship; yet to be on board her now presents equal parts contentment and pain._

_He bothers the Queen. She is in somewhat self-imposed isolation in one of the less convenient towers, at an uneasy truce with the Prince and Princess, clearly distrusted by almost everyone in the Enchanted Forest. He is one of her only visitors, and though she snarls at him, he thinks she secretly enjoys his company. She never has any good news for him though. His time in the villages and at the harbor has given him a chance to mingle with both townspeople and sojourners. He grasps for any shred of information, any inkling of a new way to travel between realms, takes to the Queen even the tiniest possibilities. After the first couple of months, once he has convinced her that he does not mean to give up, she begins seriously researching the leads he brings her._

_He tends to the _Jolly_, plays games of chance at the tavern, helps rebuild the kingdom, and waits and waits and waits… _

_One day, he borrows a horse from the royal stables, and rides out to Lake Nostos. The lake bed is damp, with one sad little puddle of water in the middle, leftover from Cora's manipulations. Without much expectation, he scoops a bit of the water into a glass vial, and corks it. He inhales sharply through his nose, and thinks that he hears the resounding clangs of colliding swords. _When I jab you with my sword…_ What a fool he'd been. There is a path through the forest that he knows will take him to the beanstalk, but he avoids it._

_She would be too close there, just as she is too close at the lake, and on his ship, and around her parents and her friends… It turns out that the farewell promise he'd made to her was not at all hard to keep. It's as if he has no choice in the matter at all. He could no more refrain from thinking of her than he could cease to breathe._

_He pulls on the reins, his touch expert, though one-handed, and turns the horse's head for home. There is coexistent relief and sorrow at leaving a place that reminds him of her. Wind wafts through the bare branches that arch over his path home. An odd, otherworldly cry carries to him, borne on the breeze – aloft, yet not avian. He looks over his shoulder, squinting at several dark specks looping and soaring, misshapen and winged. They fly in the general direction of Regina's castle, to which their rebuilding efforts have not yet extended. _

_He knows what the flying objects appear to be, but he thinks that perhaps his visual acuity is finally diminishing after three hundred years, because he cannot possibly be seeing what he thinks he is seeing._

You've seen eternal boyhood, beanstalks with giants living on top of them, fairies, and shadows that fly independently – hell, _you're_ 330 years old – but _this _is where you draw the line?_ He hears his sarcastic inner voice as Emma's, and its blow is rapier-keen. He closes his eyes briefly, and resumes his path home._

_He thinks of the vial of lake water, carefully cushioned inside the leather saddlebag. In and of itself, it cannot help him. It restores things, but must have an agent on which to act: a bean, the enchanted wood of the wardrobe, the…_

_His thoughts trail off and it's as if his limbs put the whole puzzle together before his brain does, because he has kicked the horse into a gallop and nearly falls off._

_Enchanted wood…_ enchanted…!

_The _ Jolly.

_Part of him attempts to be cautionary, attempts to stem the rising tide of hope swelling within him. His stride is even and unrushed, once he has sent the horse all but skidding into the stable yard, but his face is so pale and set, his eyes ablaze with blue fire, that Grumpy sends an extra squad of guards to the castle wall in case of a pursuing threat. He forces himself not to take the winding stone stairs three at a time, but his heart is surging so violently that he feels as if he has run all the way from the lake._

_He bursts through the oaken door, already speaking before he realizes that the Queen has company. They are sitting together on a small chaise; she is showing him something in a large leather book. They look up at him, startled; their twinned gestures would have made him laugh on any occasion other than this. Still, he cocks his head and squints at the vaguely familiar man with the Queen._

"_Locksley?"_

"_Jones." Locksley's voice is curt, and he looks more than a little discomfited to have been discovered here. Normally, Hook would enjoy this, would stash this bit of information away for use at a later date over a game of darts, preferably during a crucial shot, but there are more important things afoot presently._

_The Queen is already watching him, with an expectant look of annoyed tolerance. But as he outlines his idea, her expression gradually changes, shifts so that he can see it in her eyes too: hope… though she tries to squelch it._

"_What you're suggesting is crude, inelegant… _sloppy_," she spits the last word at him. "The water on its own will not give your ship the ability to pass through portals. The water could act on something else enchanted, something weaker… perhaps your ship could provide an extra… no, we would need…" She is thinking aloud, pacing back and forth in between the two men. "Where is Tinker Bell?"_

"_I haven't seen her in over a week. I think she's been scouting the southern border for the Prince. What about Blue?"_

_The Queen mutters something that sounds like "pretentious bitch", and says, "I'd rather wait for Tinker Bell." Then, so quickly that Hook thinks he must have imagined it, she darts a glance at Locksley and blushes._

"_But couldn't Blue – ?" Hook begins, impatient to implement any kind of quest that would lead him to Emma. The Queen's face is stony and uncompromising. Of_ course_, Tinker Bell would be gone when they needed her. He takes a moment to amiably curse the newly reacquired wings that had led to her volunteering for any kind of extended mission that needed to be undertaken._

"_Speaking of flying…" he remembers suddenly, following his own rambling thoughts, even though they had been speaking of no such thing. "I was riding out toward Lake Nostos today, and – "_

"_Of course you were,"_ _the Queen needles, and he spears her with a dirty look._

"_I thought I might be going mad, but I thought I saw…flying monkeys…" He says the last two words in a tone of bewilderment, and Locksley's eyes glint with suppressed laughter. Bastard. But the Queen's face mutes any rejoinder he might make. She is pale, and one hand trembles as she sits back on the chaise shakily._

"_What did you say?" She manages in a voice that is a shadow of its normal strident self._

"_Flying monkeys." He arches an eyebrow, regaining most of his equanimity with the confirmation that he is not, in fact, going mad. "I gather, then, that you're acquainted with the person to whom they belong…?"_

* * *

When Hook steps onto the dock, which is weathered by salt and coated in a layer of seagull droppings, the sea is lapping at the _Jolly_'s quarterdeck, and when he looks back at her, he knows it is for the last time. He is grateful that he had cleared his quarters of his personal belongings before his voyage, leaving them in the care of Tinker Bell. Still, he feels strangely guilty about the drowning _Jolly_, as if he is somehow complicit in her murder.

The Queen warned him – the Queen and the fairies, actually – that this mode of travel was likely to be one-way only. This cobbled-together bastardization of magical methodology was likely to be perilous, if not fatal, that warping the structure of his ship to make it both the portal and that which carried him through the portal would destroy her. Yet, when he surged up through ripples of light and sound that looked like waves, but did not get him wet, following a rushing, teeth-rattling journey that far surpassed his roughest crossings, he thought that perhaps she would survive as well.

They have no true plan for his return with Emma and Henry. The Queen had theorized that Emma's inherent magic, whether or not she remembered that she possessed it, would guide the _Jolly, _so that Hook would end up in Emma's general proximity. Snow White had wanted to know what would happen if it turned out that Emma lived in Kansas, wherever the bloody hell that was. His eyes trip approvingly over the endless vista of massive buildings. Perhaps it has worked, and she is here… somewhere. He will search for as long as it takes, and if Fortune smiles on him, they will not return to the Enchanted Forest too late.

He makes his way down a path he has traveled before; he wends his way through towers of empty, rotting crates, and narrow alleyways strewn with refuse. He will somehow find Emma in this unbelievable, writhing, teeming _glut_ of humanity. He will _make_ her remember him, remember her family, remember Storybrooke – _how_ he will accomplish this, he is not yet sure.

He does not look back at his sinking ship. If Liam and Milah and three hundred years in Neverland were the milestones on this path to Emma, then he can accept that, albeit painfully. He wants the _Jolly_ to be the last girl he loses. He wants Emma to be the last girl he loves, the last reason he has for any choice he makes. He wants her to be the other half of his happy ending; even if he is a villain and there is not redemption enough for him in all of the realms, surely _she _deserves hers.

_She has hers_, something whispers insidiously, and this inner voice of turmoil and doubt sounds like Cora. _She has her happy ending right now: where she never gave up her son, where she never went to Storybrooke, where she didn't have to be a savior, where she wasn't constantly risking her life, where she never met _you_._

_But it isn't real_, he argues back inwardly. _She hates lies; something false would be meaningless to her, empty, hollow. She would want it to be real._

He rummages in the worn leather satchel he carries for the gloved wooden hand, twisting and removing his hook with a practiced gesture, and placing it carefully in an inner pocket of his leather duster. The hand isn't terribly functional, but he's gathered from his time in Storybrooke that people don't go around wearing _hooks_ terribly often in this world. He had entertained slight concern about his attire the last time he'd come to this city, only to find that people took almost no notice of him whatsoever, and that there were people dressed in _far_ stranger clothing than his.

He peels back a section of metallic fencing that is detached from its framework, and steps onto the sidewalk, heading toward the sounds and smells of heavier traffic.

"Pardon me," he finally accosts a likely person on a crowded street corner. The man has on a knit cap much like the ones his crew afforded, and tattoos twine up both arms. He is wearing a black shirt and leather vest, and cuts mildly wary eyes at Hook. "I seek information."

"Don't we all, pal?" The stranger mumbles.

"Are there not… books… or – or indices, which list the names and locations of the residents of this city? Can you tell me where I could locate such an item?" It takes the young man a moment to decipher what Hook is saying.

"You – you mean a _phone book_?"

Hook has no idea if that is what he means, but it sounds promising, so he nods.

"Google'd be faster."

"I beg your pardon?"

The stranger is now looking at him as though he'd dropped out of a clear blue sky, which he supposes is more or less true. He pulls a flat rectangular object from his pocket, and Hook looks on with interest, when he recognizes it for a cell phone. In no time at all, the stranger has looked up Emma's name.

There are seven Emma Swans in the city. But one has a middle name, one spells her surname _Swann_, and one has _and Kevin _added to her listing. He withdraws a piece of squashed parchment from another pocket, along with a leaky writing instrument, _Bic_ engraved onto the side, that he had swiped from the front desk at Granny's. He scrawls down the other four addresses, and wants to ask the stranger how to find these places, but is loath to impose upon him further.

"Many thanks for your help." Hook sketches a half-bow, as he tucks the parchment back into its place.

"No problem, man. I hope you find her."

* * *

_It becomes apparent rather quickly that they are in trouble. The flying monkeys Hook had spotted that day at Lake Nostos had been only a harbinger of things to come. Whispers, frightening stories told in dark corners of taverns, begin to spread throughout the kingdom. People go missing. Locksley is four days late returning from his mission at the top of the beanstalk, and the Queen is nearly beside herself, though she refuses to admit it. Fear is on the wind, behind people's eyes, seeping through the Forest like a toxin._

_She is beautiful, the whispers say, beautiful and deadly, cold and merciless, _more powerful than the Queen_. She hails from another realm (Hook immediately wonders how she traveled to the Enchanted Forest), one known as Oz._

_The Queen finally breaks down and tells all of them what she knows. Hooks thinks the fear of losing Locksley has prompted her sudden forthrightness. He can relate._

"_I think she's after me."_

"_And why would that be?" The not-quite-hostility seems to be Charming's go-to stance when dealing with his stepmother-in-law._

"_I might have dropped a house on her sister… among other things…"_

"_If we give you to her, do you think she'll spare the kingdom?"_

"Charming!_" The Princess is shocked, but Hook only narrowly suppresses a laugh. It is quite obvious whence Emma got her blunt manner._

"_It might buy you some time," the Queen says, something like grudging admiration for Charming glinting in her eyes. "But she'd be back. Honestly, I'm not sure what she hopes to gain here."_

_Five days later, Tinker Bell arrives back, sooty and wounded and in a panic. By then, they can all see it: the shadow of boiling storm clouds on the horizon, an unnatural wind, a sickly purplish-gray tint to the sky._

_Another curse._

_There is nowhere left to go. There is not much time._

_They meet for a hasty conclave in the great hall of the palace._

"_You need to go," Charming says to Hook. "You have your ship. You've been working on a way to cross realms."_

"_It's not ready yet," Hook admits quietly, glancing at the Queen. "We don't even know if it will work."_

"_We don't have any other options." The Princess' voice is mellifluous and pleading. "We don't even know what this curse will do. But Emma is the product of True Love. I think she can break it. If we can get everyone into the castle… how long can you hold it off?" Her last question is directed at the Queen._

"_I can put magical protections around the castle, but they won't hold for long. Maybe a week… two at the most…"_

_Charming springs into action, ordering the dwarfs to round up as many people as they can and bring them within the castle walls. "And ready a horse for Hook," he adds._

"_Your Highness – " Hook protests, but Charming puts a hand on his shoulder in camaraderie._

"_I trust you to do this. Bring her home. Bring Henry home. You're the only one who can do this."_

"_And why are you so certain? We have no idea where she _is. _And the Land Without Magic is vast."_

"_Because True Love always finds its match," Charming says simply, exchanging a heartfelt look with his wife. Hook feels each word like a blow to the gut. He darts a somewhat guilty glance at Baelfire, who does not meet it._

"_How do you – how do you _know_?" _That I'm her True Love_, is what he does not add, but Charming seems to realize that without being told. His smile is fatherly._

"_I just know."_

_Bashful reenters the great hall, and stammers than the horse is ready for the Captain. They ready his satchel by committee, making sure that the water from Lake Nostos and the soil from giants' bean fields are secure. Everyone knows it is a long shot, but the beans were magical, so perhaps some residue remains where they had been planted. Tinker Bell flutters nearby, ready to accompany him to the docks and coat his ship in pixie dust._

_The plan is everything the Queen had said it was: sloppy, inelegant, a haphazard mishmash of magic that has no guarantee of working. They are going to attempt, not to open a portal, but to turn the _Jolly_ into one. The Queen has warned him that the ship might not even hold together under the assault. It is a risk he is willing to take._

_At the entrance to the castle, he turns back, and his eyes trip over the faces. They have become his family in a way, and he had long ago forgotten what that felt like. He hopes his eyes convey what he cannot find the words to express. He gives a businesslike nod to Charming and to Locksley._

"_Stay safe," he says, meaning it with every fiber of his being._

"_Find them," the Prince replies, meaning it as much as Hook had. "And come home."_

_The sky is growing ever darker. He flings himself into the saddle, and makes his way to the docks at a breakneck pace, Tinker Bell zipping along just over his shoulder._

* * *

It takes several days to track down the different Emma Swans. He finds Baelfire's old apartment without too much trouble. It has just been vacated again, so he pays the astonished landlord in two gold coins, and promises to leave if he finds a renter.

_She _is the third Emma Swan. He manages to spot Henry walking the two short blocks to school one morning, and he hurries back to the apartment to formulate a plan. He is afraid of seeing her if he stays, and if he sees her, he is not sure what he will do.

He paces in the apartment, raking his hand through his hair. He feels a sort of queasy excitement, laced with no small amount of trepidation. She doesn't remember him; she doesn't remember that fairy tales are real, that her parents are Snow White and Prince Charming, that he is Captain Hook. She will be rational and practical, believing herself to be as utterly without magic as the land in which she resides.

And he, a stranger, _a pirate_, is going to show up and try to convince her that her life is a lie, and children's stories are true. He does not like his chances.

_True Love's Kiss?_ He wonders if that could work. The Prince had seemed certain that Emma was his True Love. Would the magic in the Kiss activate if he were not _hers_? The mere thought sends a pang through him.

He spends a restless night, tossing and turning on the bed that used to be Baelfire's, thinking longingly of the carafe of rum on the kitchen table that he dares not drink, not tonight, not with something so important happening on the morrow.

He arrives at her building early, wanting to catch her before she has left for work. It takes him fifteen minutes to work up the nerve to approach the door, but he finally does, just as a preoccupied looking man in a dark suit exits, phone pressed to his ear. Hook slinks through the closing door, but the man doesn't even look his way.

He prowls the lobby, checking the receptacles for the mail. There are only numbers on the boxes, but he does learn that there are thirty apartments. His eyes dart toward the door marked "Stairs", and he sighs. _Better start knocking, Jones_, he thinks.

But something lightens within him, as he mounts the stairs to the third floor, having been met so far with five door slams, two rude "No's" , four apologetic "No's", three doors that stubbornly stayed shut, and one uncertain, "I think she lives upstairs. With her kid?" When he enters the corridor, he knows. _She is close_, he can feel it.

Every one of the three hundred and eighty-five days seem to stretch before him as he arrives at the first apartment. He feels like it must be visible to bystanders: how much he wants her, how much he misses her, how much he loves her. It doesn't matter how long it takes, or how difficult it is – he must convince her that he is telling the truth. _He must_.

He looks at the brass numbers affixed to the door: 311.

He can hear music playing. He can hear the soft murmur of voices, one of them a child's.

_Happy endings always start with hope. _ And she is his happy ending; she is the last girl.

He knocks.

**FIN**

**A/N: ** *waves* Hi. This is my first attempt at a OUAT fic, having been inspired by the long, cruel, dark hiatus, which continues to yawn before us. I was more or less a casual viewer, until Killian Jones appeared on the scene, along with his amazing chemistry with... like, everything. So, here is my offering to the Captain Swan world. I hope you enjoy it. Many thanks to Witherwings01 for giving this a once-over before posting! You may leave a review on the way out if you like.


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